Many private and rural airstrips in Australia and other countries around the world lack safe and suitable landing lights for illuminating the runway for the landing of approaching aircraft and the departure of aircraft already on the ground. In many instances, a flight originally intended to reach its destination in daylight hours is delayed by bad weather, wind, later than anticipated departure times or other reasons resulting in the flight arriving at the intended airstrip at or past sunset. Indeed, in emergency situations it may be necessary for an aircraft carrying medical personal and equipment to land at an airstrip past sunset.
In such situations, it is usual procedure for the pilot to contact persons at the destination to illuminate the airstrip for the landing of the flight when it is known the arrival of the flight will be past sunset.
The airstrip may be illuminated with the use of kerosene wick lanterns, torches or for instance vehicle or tractor headlights. However, this is far from satisfactory. A system of battery powered lanterns may also be utilised to illuminate an airstrip for the arrival of late or emergency flights. However, this system too suffers from disadvantages. In particular, the batteries of such lanterns need to be adequately charged and the lanterns need to be well maintained. In the case of kerosene lamps, it can be difficult to light the wick in wet or poor weather, and the lamps can present a serious fire hazard in dry periods. Further, the light from torches or vehicle headlights is generally insufficient for illuminating more than only a limited section of an airstrip.
Further, such lighting systems generally lack reliability and each depend on persons being present at the airstrip for their use. Unavailability of persons at the airstrip can have disastrous consequences particularly in poor weather conditions with the potential for loss of life.
In addition, a hard wired buried cable, lighting and power source system is expensive to install and in many instances, limited use of an airstrip makes installation of such a system uneconomical. These systems also require relatively intensive maintenance for satisfactory working operation.